genesis on Affairs

If I were making a list of benefits like the one Mike McKinley imagines, only this time using the devil’s actual logic, it might look more like this: Experience the excitement of new romance. Get th...

Did you hear about how, after Adam stayed out late a few nights, Eve became suspicious? “You’re running around with another woman— admit it!” she yelled. "What other woman?!” Adam was mystified. ...

Preaching Angle: John Arrested, Jesus Preaches the Kingdom The major event in redemptive history which immediately precedes this passage is Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. I can’t imagine a 40 d...

Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: John Arrested, Jesus Preaches the Kingdom The major event in redemptive history which immediately precedes this passage is Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness....

Sometimes great stories introduce the protagonist in the very first paragraph. In Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, for example, we are immediately introduced to Pip, the central figure of the nov...

God uses our identity crises to reveal who we are and who he is. Sometimes these crises come out of nowhere. Something devastating happens. Someone close to us dies. We are diagnosed, or someone we kn...

Several years ago I saw a television show called Caught on Camera . It featured clips of people being secretly filmed doing all manner of horrific things, precisely because they thought they were...

I read in a book recently about a young pastor who was fired from his church over a theological controversy. When he went to share the news with his wife, he said, “I’ve got good news and bad news, wh...

Invitations are powerful. Like tides, they ebb and flow, shaping the contours of our existence. Some invitations we desperately want but never get—“Will you marry me?” or “Would you consider a promoti...

I spent a considerable amount of time with a guy I’ll call Martin. As a brand-new follower of Christ, Martin felt guilty for having previously embezzled a lot of money from his employer. After discuss...

I have read that each of us experiences a relatively significant crisis on an average of once every six months or so.

I did some of my Clinical Pastoral Education Units in Gastonia. One of the units that I served was the Emergency Department. If there was an incident that was suspected to be gang related, they would ...

As my AA, NA, and CA friends have repeatedly reminded me, rigorous honesty is the first rule of recovery.

Your decisions . . . along with your responses to other people’s decisions, which are also your decisions...are about the only thing you can control in life, which means your decisions are how you con...

Indeed, there comes a time in the life of every believer and of every church where a voice inside us simply asks, Now what? After we have been introduced to Jesus and have found peace with God through...

Speedy Morris is the basketball coach for LaSalle University. He was shaving when his wife told him he was wanted on the phone by Sports Illustrated. He got so excited over the prospect of national re...

The Texas-based pastor Matt Chandler spent a decade working with teenagers, and during that time, he realized how a specific change takes place between sixth graders and ninth graders. As Chandler say...

Christian politics concerns how we integrate our confession that Jesus is Lord with our call to love our neighbors.

To frame is to put a language boundary around our experience. It is to name what happens in particular ways, to say how we see the world, and to see the world how we say it is. Framing includes tellin...

“Here’s something to think about: How come you never see a headline like ‘Psychic Wins Lottery’?”

Games aren’t appealing because they are fun, but because they are limited. Because they erect boundaries. Because we must accept their structures in order to play them.

I like to say that generalizations are always wrong and usually helpful.

Notes on prayer: This prayer is designed for a leader and a congregation, but it could be further divided so that the Leader/People response sections are "voice 1" and "voice 2." ...

Notes on prayer: This lament can be used as prayers of the people, but can be adapted for other uses as well. It is designed to be responsive, but it would also work if prayed in unison. Leader: ...

In this short excerpt, author Ashley Hales describes the disembodying reality of being glued to screens, and a few ways to become back in touch with our embodied selves: Perhaps we look to a scree...

An individual doesn’t get cancer, a family does.

“He wanted Everest in a day; if it took two, he lost interest.”

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

From the dawn of civilization to 2003, five exabytes of data were created. The same amount was created in the last two days.

Death is not an eventuality that with luck, waits for another day. It is today’s cup from which God now insists you drink. If you think that somehow you can choose today not to carry the deaths of you...